TRANSCRIPT

A PINEWOOD DIALOGUE WITH

The elusive nature of reality, and the way that perception is shaped by memory and imagination, is among David Cronenberg’s key subjects. Working in the supposedly lowbrow genres of horror and science fiction ( , ), and in the highbrow form of literary or theatrical adaptation ( Naked Lunch , M. Butterfly , Spider ), Cronenberg has created a remarkably varied body of work. A decade after his complete retrospective at the Museum, Cronenberg returned to Moving Image to discuss Spider , his adaptation of Patrick McGrath’s novel about a schizophrenic whose tenuous hold on reality is threatened by fragmented memories of a family trauma.

A Pinewood Dialogue following a screening of said to Patrick—and that was even before I read the Spider , moderated by Chief Curator David novel—I said, “These are two different people. Schwartz (January 10, 2003): There’s no way that the Spider that you’ve invented for the cinema could be the one who speaks this SCHWARTZ: Please welcome David Cronenberg. way, who has these perceptions, and, in particular, (Applause) can be that articulate about what he’s feeling and what’s going on in his head.” CRONENBERG: The thing is I didn’t read the book [Spider] until later. Then I read a lot of Patrick So my solution was the usual one, which is just [McGrath]’s stuff and I thought that he is a subtraction. I just got rid of a lot of stuff that was in wonderful writer. But I was surprised to find how that first draft—in particular, the voice-over. And I different the book really was to the screenplay. And still wanted Spider to be writing, because I needed to me, that was a good sign. I’ve said many times, something physical for him to do that was in order to be faithful to a novel, you have to betray obsessive and that let you know that he was the novel. Because there is no dictionary that allows basically taking evidence for a crime that he felt you to translate in any way. There’s no such thing had been committed. So he was very obsessive, as a translation to the screen. You have to reinvent and I needed him to have something physical to the thing completely, the two media are so do, but I didn’t want to read what he was writing. So completely different. And if you feel that you have I asked Ralph [Fiennes] to develop his own achieved that, it’s really an illusion. To make you hieroglyphics, kind of a cuneiform, that he could think, “Well, it’s almost like reading the novel.” If write very fluently—and I’m sure he still can. So he you can do that, it’s a kind of a miracle. But I don’t developed that because I wanted to be able to see even worry about that. And obviously, Patrick didn’t him do it. And he has very distinctive hands; I didn’t worry about that, either, because he was very brutal want to have some graphic artist’s hands in there in his reinvention of the character of Spider, and the doing something. So that was all—that’s Ralph’s basic structure of it. design.

This is how it went. In the book, Spider writes the SCHWARTZ: And the narration of his sort of novel. That is his journal. The novel is his journal. muttering, incomprehensible… And that means that he’s very literary and he writes beautifully. And he’s very adept with words and very CRONENBERG: You mean you didn’t understand manipulative and so on. The screenplay that I read that? had Spider writing in his journal—in English; you could read it—and then it had voice-over. And it SCHWARTZ: Maybe it was the sound system; I don’t had, basically, Spider reading from the novel. And I know. (Laughs)

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CRONENBERG: When we showed the film in Cannes, SCHWARTZ: The first shot, the shot of the train they had French subtitles for every… (Laughter) station is just amazing. it’s such a powerful image. They did. And the translator, Serge Gruberg, who’s Is that something that was filmed early on? written books on me, is a very close friend. And I said, “Serge, you know, why did you do that?” He CRONENBERG: That was the last shot we did. said, “The problem is, if he speaks and there are no subtitles, they think we made a mistake because SCHWARTZ: Was it really? they’ll expect a translation.” So there’s a lot of stuff there; I think he invented some of it, Serge. CRONENBERG: Yeah. I used all my extras in that (Laughter) Because you can’t really understand all shot. (Laughter) of that. Well, in a way it’s true. I find the feedback that I get SCHWARTZ: Well, we’ll show it with French subtitles from English people is terrific, because they really next. That’s got to be great. find this to be accurate in terms of the tone, the feel of maybe 1959 in the flashbacks, and the early CRONENBERG: Well, the French-subtitled version is ‘80s. But the truth is that you will never find the the version! (Laughter) Well, that was something, I streets of London as empty as I shot them. Not in mean, Ralph and I—and in fact Peter Suschitzky, the ‘50s, not in the ‘40s, not ever. But I had extras the director of photography—we all work in a very dressed in period costume, and I had period cars intuitive manner. And so I don’t do storyboards. ready to drive through the frame, and baby And certainly, for Spider , anyway, Ralph didn’t do carriages, and stuff. And whenever I put them on the equivalent of that, which might be a long the streets with Spider, it felt wrong. And I kept rehearsal and preparation, and so on. subtracting, once again. I said, “Well, let’s get rid of that, let’s get rid of that.” And I would end up with The preparation is very physical. I mean, actors are Spider alone. So that was when I realized that we bodies. They’re very embodied. Directors are kind were not just making a sort of first-person movie, of disembodied, most of the time. You’re behind but almost an expressionistic movie. That is, that the camera. If you have a cold sore that day or your was Spider’s inner sense of isolation that we were hair looks terrible, it just doesn’t matter. But if you’re showing, rather than what you would see if you an actor, those things really do matter, because were standing there on the street with him. So it’s a your body is your instrument, and everything that kind of a double game that I’m playing, which is touches it is important to you. It’s not vanity; they sort of cultural accuracy, but an expressionistic have to be obsessed about their hair and their version of it. The wallpaper was incredibly makeup and their clothes, and so on. So, as many important. There’s lots of wallpaper in this movie. actors do, but in particular as Ralph does, it’s all an And we got tons of it. It’s all vintage, authentic accumulation of details—get the clothes right, the English wallpaper. Authentic down to being moldy nicotine stains on the fingers, and so on. And and damp and drab and stained and all of that. there’s a lot of preparation that goes on before you start to shoot. But we realized the first day of SCHWARTZ: You have talked about working with shooting that we had actually never seen Spider some of the same people and the walk. And of course, the language that Spider cinematographer, editor. You worked with a lot of speaks is mostly body language; that’s his main the same people—[composer] Howard Shore—but language in this movie. And so it was crucial. The the production designer was different. first shot that we did, which was the shot of him walking down the street towards Mrs. Wilkinson’s CRONENBERG: Yes. Carol Spier was trapped in house, a crane shot—one of the main things that Prague doing Blade II . (Laughter) I think she’s still we were looking for was: is that the right walk for there. I think she is still there, because she’s doing Spider? Because you’re establishing it. There has The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen . She spent to be continuity. And so it’s all, it develops in a very nine months there doing Blade II . So for the first intuitive, day-by-day kind of way. time since we started on Fast Company , which was

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a long time ago. (Scattered applause, laughter) I that great hair, and those great cheekbones. And had a different production designer. And I had to yet somehow looking like a vagrant. And it didn’t audition production designers, which is something occur to me, really, until after we finished editing the that I had gotten out of the habit of doing, because movie that Spider was in fact a reasonable kind of I just automatically would use Carol. So the nightmare emblem of an artist. That is to say, he’s advantage that Andrew Sanders would have over writing obsessively about his life, about things that Carol would be that some of the stuff he wouldn’t have great passion and meaning for him. And yet have to do research for, because he lived through he’s writing in a language that no one can that era in England. And so he could say, “No, no, understand, he’s completely not understood. And the potatoes were that color, because I used to eat that is kind of the nightmare of any artist, that he them and I remember them.” On the other hand, should do that and have no communication with Carol has an amazing way of somehow anybody. I’ve had moments…(Laughter) I’ve had transporting herself into different times and places, moments where I could come out here and there’d so I have no doubt that she could’ve done a be nobody sitting here, (Laughter) and I’d just be wonderful job, as well. talking to you. So the Beckett connection was even closer. But I also did think that Spider could be a SCHWARTZ: You did shift the time period a bit from character from, well, you think of Krapp’s Last Tape the novel. as a play, but also some of his novels, more than the plays. But we also were thinking of that austerity CRONENBERG: Yeah. I can’t even remember if and that purity of what Beckett was doing. And that Patrick had done it or I did. I think maybe we did came from the character of Spider, who has none it… Well, it was a collaboration, in any case. But of those distractions that we have from the there’s a lot of stuff about the war in the novel, existential realities. He has no friends, he has no because the first part of it happens right after the network that derives from work that he does, no art, war, so there’re a lot of references to the Second seems to have no religion. He really just has what World War in England. And I didn’t feel there was he’s carrying on his back and in his hand. And so room in the movie to deal with that; it’s another that, too, felt very Beckett-like to me, just in terms of subject. So I moved it a little further along, to the that austerity. late ‘50s. I didn’t really want to do a ‘60s movie, either. So there’re no Beatles posters or anything. SCHWARTZ: And you were not really interested in And I was just trying to find an era that was specific, exploring schizophrenia or mental illness, I mean, but not so well-known to the world at large that it the way that, last year’s Oscar-winning best film, A would distract from what was going on. And the Beautiful Mind … early ‘80s, well, that was just the time lapse between when Spider would first go to his asylum CRONENBERG: Did that explore it? (Laughter) and when he would get out at the age of 35. SCHWARTZ: Well… SCHWARTZ: Now, I just feel so much Samuel Beckett in the film. And you’ve talked about Ralph’s CRONENBERG: I missed it. (Laughter) I missed that haircut being somewhat modeled on Beckett. But part. (Applause) Well, I have to make a confession also, just a lot of the tone of the film—particularly here. I got a letter from a woman in London, with the three men, the scene out in the field. I Ontario, who was very upset, because she had mean, there were just a lot of times I feel like you’re read something on the Internet where I’d actually adapting Beckett. bad-mouthed A Beautiful Mind , which I normally don’t do in public. I mean, in private, of course, I’m CRONENBERG: Yes, well, stealing. (Laughter) very terrible on movies. Stealing from him. It’s not in the novel, of course, and it’s not really in the screenplay, but just the way SCHWARTZ: You think you can come to America and it was described in the screenplay—I started to berate our… think very much of those shots of Beckett walking through the streets of Paris with his notebook, and

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depiction of schizophrenia—which embodies itself CRONENBERG: I think someone in her family was in completely different ways in people; it’s not just suffering from schizophrenia. And she said that the one very specific set of symptoms. I had a woman movie A Beautiful Mind had done more for the come up to me after a screening that we had in image of schizophrenia and schizophrenics than all Toronto. And she said to me, “How did you know the sort of stuff that the Canadian Schizophrenia about the bathtub?” And I said, “What do you Society had ever done. And I have yet to write her mean?” She said, “Well, I have one of those at back the letter that I have composed in my mind, home. My son’s 23, 6-foot-5, schizophrenic. And which is exactly, that—that I didn’t really think that when he takes a bath, that’s how he looks. That’s that movie was dealing with schizophrenia at all. what he does, that’s how he holds himself.” And And I have a feeling that anybody who lived with she said, “You must’ve done research.” And I said, that would agree. “No.” I mean, in the script, it says, “Spider lies in the bathtub.” And it was just, Ralph’s and our I have been on panels with Patrick [McGrath], and I understanding of what this character would do, would say this: Ralph asked me if he could—he what a bath would mean to him, how exposed and wanted to meet schizophrenics, and he wanted to vulnerable he would feel. And just the way we lit it meet psychiatrists, and go to asylums, and so on. and the lens that we used, and the music that And I said, “Absolutely, we’ll help you do that. But Howard Shore composed for that scene—all of that I’m not really that interested in it, because I’m not ended up, for her, delivering a sort of clinically wanting to do a clinical study of a disease.” To me, accurate version of what she was living with, with Spider represents the human condition. And that’s her son. So there are many ways to accuracy. And what I’m interested in. And I don’t want to give the that seemed to be one of them. audience a chance to distance themselves from Spider and say, “Well, he’s schizophrenic, so it’s SCHWARTZ: So many of your films create a something wrong with him; and I’m not that.” subjectivity where we’re in a world that’s really the Because I really wanted the audience to become world of the main character. And you do it, I think, Spider by the end of it, to really be in his head. in subtle ways, I think through camera placement, through—the sound design in this film is very And then Patrick had said, “What David said he subtle, but, I think, really takes us inside Spider. if didn’t want to do is exactly what I did want to do in you could talk a bit about cinematically how you my novel.” Patrick was raised at Broadmoor Prison created this. for the Criminally Insane, because his father was a medical superintendent there. And it’s a huge CRONENBERG: Well, once again I say, it’s kind of Victorian estate, in northern England. And he said intuitive. I don’t really know what lens I’m going to that schizophrenics and axe murderers were his use before we shoot, and I don’t know how I’m pram pushers—is the way he put it. So he was very going to choreograph the scene before we shoot. concerned, in particular, that his father would find— So it’s really a matter of feeling your way through speaking of Oedipal stuff, that certainly there is in the scenes one by one and experimenting. It’s hard this movie, as well, he wanted his father to give his to say. There are a lot of technical things I could seal of approval to the clinical aspects of say. We used a very low-contrast Fuji film stock, schizophrenia. Well, my approach was completely which is not normally what Peter Suschitzky and I different. I said, “We’ve got to be free to allow would do. And that tends to make the shadows Spider to develop in any way that we feel works. more grey, not very dark—and the brights are kind And I don’t want to have a list of symptoms that of muted. And then I used very wide-angle lenses we’re checking off and saying, ‘Okay, we’ve for close-ups. They’re wide-angle in the sense that covered the hallucinations, we’ve covered this, we you don’t normally use them for close-ups—21 covered that.’” millimeters and 27 millimeters—which sort of keeps the background in focus, as well as the face. Not And yet, as so often happens when your instincts the normal portrait thing that you would do. You’d are right and focused, I have had lots of normally use a long lens that would throw the confirmation that it feels like a very accurate background out of focus. So it makes Spider blend

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into his own background, in a way. And this is all role he’d ever played, and he’s played a lot of roles. rationalization after the fact, I freely confess. But it But it was because a lot of the time—maybe most just felt right when we were doing it. Although there of the time—he’s not playing a character, he’s is a sort of an analytical thing that I… Well, it was playing the fantasy projection of another character. intuitive, as well. And that’s very difficult to do. Where do we see the real Bill, you know? Little bits and pieces kind of There were a lot of effects that would be what we come out. And the main scene, of course, was the call special effects in the script originally, and even scene in the woodshed, where he says to Spider, more in the novel. And they are the kind of things “Why are you so angry with us?” And there you that people would think that I would really like to do. see… It was very interesting also—in Toronto, when But in fact, I only like to do that stuff if it works. we screened it, people laughed at that line. And I Special effects is just like lighting or editing or would never have anticipated a laugh at that line. anything else; it’s just another thing that you use if And then I realized, of course, that if you really you need it, not something, I think, to be obsessed believe that Bill has murdered his wife, Spider’s with. So for example, there was a scene where the mother, and replaced her with this slut from the boy cuts into a potato, and it starts to bleed. And, pub, why is he asking, “Why are you so angry with of course, it’s his mother’s blood, because he us?” I mean, it’s obvious why the kid’s angry. Then thinks she’s buried under this potato patch. And so the audience got quieter and quieter, and they it’s a very legit kind of hallucination. But it would be began to realize that, oh, my God, maybe that isn’t very obvious to an audience that it’s a hallucination really true; maybe this is the real Bill that we’re and that it’s not real. And I had the guys make the seeing, not the demonic Bill who can kill his wife potato. They showed it to me; it exploded the first and then have a swig, and bring her home and not time they showed it to me, got blood all over seem to worry about what the neighbors would everything. (Laughter) This is normal for effects think, and expect the kid to just kind of accept this guys. And then they were very, very sad— woman. But that’s what happens if you’re really melancholy, I’d say (Laughter)—when I didn’t shoot doing the subjective thing. But, as I say, it makes it it. But the thing was that it was…I realized by that difficult. If you see the movie again, it will become time that it was from some other movie. quite a different movie, I guarantee it.

The movie gradually reveals itself to you. And it SCHWARTZ: Let’s take some questions from the doesn’t mean that you don’t know what you’re audience. (Repeats audience question ) did you doing, but it does mean that you’re kind of creating ever have a motivation in your head for Spider a complex living thing. And you want it to surprise killing his mother? you and push you around and tell you what it wants to do and what it doesn’t want. Characters do that, CRONENBERG: Killing his real mother, or killing too, when you’re writing. And you normally let them, Yvonne? Well, we don’t know that what you see at because that kind of life is very hard to find, and the end is the real story. it’s possible that Spider’s when you’ve got it, you don’t let go of it. So the mother isn’t dead. It’s possible that Spider’s mother movie was kind of telling me what it wanted to be. left the family, and then, as children tend to do, Spider felt guilty that he was responsible and it was So the main hallucination in this movie is, of course, his fault, and then he developed a fantasy that he Miranda Richardson playing Yvonne. And I felt, if murdered her. So we don’t know what the truth is. it’s a subjective movie, then when Spider thinks just because Spider thinks he’s got to the truth something is real, we must also. And those other doesn’t mean we necessarily know. There could be effects/hallucinations, we would know that they a Spider II . (Laughter) were not real. The other thing is that when Spider is confused, then we’re confused. And if you’re going SCHWARTZ: We’ll see the exploding potatoes in that to really be rigorous about it, then that’s the game one. ( Repeats audience question ) If you could talk you’re playing in this movie: “It’s okay, I’m really a little bit about the sound design in the film and going to do this.” And it was very difficult for Gabriel music as well. Byrne playing Bill. He said it was the most difficult

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CRONENBERG: Well, it’s very spare. (Laughs) It’s a want that stuff around. And that’s why I—some very quiet movie, which I suppose these days is a actors don’t like this, but I don’t do rehearsals, rarity. And so you hear things that are important to because to me it all changes when you get on the Spider. What you’ve got with Spider is a man, a fully set and the real stuff is there. Miranda, I only developed human being, who has very few things learned after the fact, was a little upset about that. to put his energy, his human energy, into. So he She would’ve liked some rehearsal. But I don’t think puts it into what he’s got. So his notebook is she needed it, frankly. So it’s all impromptu. I mean, incredibly important to him, and his cigarettes and in a strange sense, a lot of what I’m doing is found his cigarette papers; and his pace is very art. I’ve put a lot of work into the look of the place, deliberate. And it never occurred to me to not let the building of the sets, or the choosing of the the movie be anything but Spider’s pace, even locations, and the costumes and everything. But though it’s, you know, not a traditional kind of then when I’m there, it’s kind of like I’m making a movie. And likewise, the sounds and the smells are documentary of what we just did, or what we’re all very important to Spider. They’re all very doing. So it’s all impromptu. significant. And it means a lot of quiet. And just the sound of his feet scrabbling on the gravel has It’s just, “Okay, Ralph is standing at the wardrobe. significance to him, too. So that was really the He’s writing. What lens will I use? Let’s look at this, shape of the sound, was that it should be very, very let’s look at that. Yeah, that looks really good.” And quiet, so that small things would take on great then my cameraman gets excited and he says, significance. “Well, we could just put a shadow here.” I encourage my cameramen to not do what And the music is… I mean, Howard Shore had just cameramen love to do, which is to do relatively finished composing the music for Lord of the Rings naturalistic lighting. If you show a room to a director that he won an Oscar for. And then Spider was his of photography that he’s going to shoot, he next movie. So, they’re very different. (Laughs) Very immediately looks for sources of light; that’s the different scores. And we didn’t have, you know, two first thing he does. Well, and if you’re designing it, hundred African choir boys and things like that. he’ll say, “Well, can we have a skylight? And can we (Laughter) And Lord of the Rings did. But it didn’t have another window over there, and can we have matter because that was the name of the game. It some practical lamps over there?” Because he’s was not that we didn’t have what we needed; we looking for sources of light to make it real—even did, we had exactly what we needed, which was though it’s all fakery, of course. And you’ll notice very small, delicate, intricate stuff that had great that there’s a lamp beside Spider’s bed and it’s resonance for Spider. And so the whole design of it never lit. Now, normally, they’d go right for that. And was subjectivity. That was the thing, that the silence I said, “We’re never going to see that on, because it can be as provocative and profound as any noise. doesn’t work; this is England.” (Laughter) And so And that’s not used very often in movies these after a little resistance, Peter really got into it, and days, but it was the basis of Spider’s sound. would use colors, gels. And not to get… I don’t want to get too cute about it—and I certainly didn’t SCHWARTZ: (Repeats audience question) Okay, in want to give the audience cues about what was terms of the composition of the shots, you said you fantasy and reality by making some scenes very didn’t do storyboards, but how did you determine green or yellow or whatever, so we didn’t do your compositions? anything like that—but there’re some scenes in Spider’s room, for example, where the light is CRONENBERG: Look through the lens. I mean, not to coming from a wall. It’s just a solid wall with no light be evasive… It’s really a sculptural procedure for fixtures on it; light could not possibly come from me. Making a movie is very tactile and physical. I there. Once again, it’s a subjective… My excuse want to touch the actors, and I need to smell the was to say, it’s the way he lights it in his head. So location, and… So to do storyboards is a very those are some of the ways that I was working. abstract thing. To me, it’s very—it’s like a kind of disembodiment. And I need to be embodied, it’s a AUDIENCE MEMBER: Yeah. More than any other very physical thing for me to make a movie, so I filmmaker I can think of, your films, at least to me,

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always really create the sense of unease and inventing them and reinventing them. And I’m sure anxiety. many of you have had the experience of having something that you thought was a memory, and CRONENBERG: You know, I was watching CNN then later your sister or your mother tells you that today, and I felt the same way. (Laughter) They’re you weren’t there then, that, in fact, that was a kind great. Fabulous. of a family communal memory that was laid on you so many times that you started to think you actually SCHWARTZ: Okay, so at what point in the production remembered it. But it’s been part of you for years, did you decide to have Spider, as an adult, present so is it not a real memory? This is the question. And in some of the memory scenes? then when you realize that memory is identity, there cannot be any identity without memory, that CRONENBERG: Speaking of unease I suppose, also. suggests that we are constantly revising our Well, it was in the script. Now, Patrick seems to identities, as well. And I think that is also true. remember it one way, which is that he only had Spider present in his own memories in one scene, SCHWARTZ: One of the things that really makes this and then I asked him to extend it to the whole work is the child—the actor who plays the young movie. And I don’t remember that; I thought it was Spider is just remarkable. Could you talk about like that to begin with. But that’s in the nature of a finding him, working with him? good and sort of fluent collaboration. When it works well, you can’t remember, almost, who came up CRONENBERG: With Harry Potter , they said they with what. So I really don’t know which way it is. But looked at nine hundred kids. I couldn’t do it, not I always liked it, and I always thought it would work. nine hundred. (Laughter) And the only other time I’ve done something quite like that was in The Dead Zone , when I have the SCHWARTZ: So you took the first one. Christopher Walken character present in his own visions. That was something that was not in the CRONENBERG: 36. We looked at 36 boys. And novel, and I had come up with. But this is different. Bradley [Hall] was… it wasn’t immediately totally But it seemed to me to be the perfect cinematic obvious, but… And he was also a lot younger than way to, first of all, give you the memories and what Patrick had imagined Spider as being as a Spider’s reaction to those memories—how he was boy, but I said, “No, he has to be—it has to be feeling, remembering those things at the same before puberty. I mean, everything changes if he’s time—but also to show you how we are present thirteen or fourteen, if he’s a man; if he has hairy always in our memories, that we are interfering with legs, I don’t want him.” (Laughter) It’s got to be them. A journalist said to me, “When Spider’s boyish little knobby English knees, in those short present in his house, looking through the window pants. So Spider was ten, basically, or he had to be and lurking in the corner, it’s like a director being on an actor who could play ten. And the woman who a film set.” And I said, “Well, I hadn’t thought of it did the casting in London specializes in kids. And that way,” but it’s exactly what it means, because she had discovered Jamie Bell, who was in Billy he’s redirecting his memories, he’s cutting them, Elliot . That was her big claim to fame. And she he’s rewriting them, he’s choreographing them. The knew all the sort of kids. And Bradley had done very understanding of memory from this movie—which little, almost nothing. He sort of belonged to a is mine as well, but Patrick’s also—is that memory drama club and had done some little theater and is always a created thing. stuff; he hadn’t really been in front of the camera. And it was a fantastic transformation for him, to see There’s a lot of creative energy that goes into him. I mean, we were all very… we loved Bradley. remembering. There’s no version of memory that’s an absolute, like a film that would stay the same And he just developed into a professional. You decade after decade, and people could look at it could see it happening. By the end of the movie… and all agree that they’re seeing the same thing. And he watched Ralph very carefully, because, of Probably with a film you wouldn’t get that, anyway. course, they were in a lot of scenes together—even But we’re constantly revising our memories and though they never speak, of course, because

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they’re the same person. And by the end of the back to that. Then there’s imagination. And those movie, he wouldn’t let the props guy, rewind the are scenes where Spider could not be string for take two; he would rewind it himself, remembering, because he wasn’t there. And that because he had a very specific way, and it had to includes a lot of stuff, including the murder of Mrs. be rewound… And many good actors are like that. Cleg. So it’s not really a structural flaw, let’s say. As I say, the things that they deal with, like props, are very personal to them, and they don’t really I was talking to the director Patricia Rozema. She want props people coming in and messing around said, “Wait a minute that a structural flaw is the key with them. to the whole movie?” (Laughter) I said, “Well, not exactly—” You could look at it that way. Because SCHWARTZ: (Repeats audience question) The she was thinking there was a mistake being made: question is, are there any scenes, either in the novel No, wait a minute, he couldn’t possibly be or the screenplay, of objective reality that’s not remembering this, because the kid isn’t there. But Spider’s reality, because there are scenes in the in fact, that’s meant to be meaningful—as is the film where Spider wasn’t present? Was the Oedipal fact that I have the same actress playing these stuff triggered by the sight of seeing the mother three roles, which is another sort of subjective trick kissing Gabriel Byrne outside the window? thing. Normally, when you have an actor playing multiple roles, it’s to show how versatile the actor is, CRONENBERG: Well, those are two separate things, and so on. But in this case, it has a point, because although they of course connect. So let me answer Spider is fusing together people in his life. The the first one first. I asked Patrick to get very specific woman in the pub that we see first, who exposes in the script about what level of memory or her breast to Spider, is not Miranda Richardson. imagination we were dealing with—for the crew, And you might not have thought of it, because you primarily, because the script…after all, it’s sort of don’t know at that point that she’s going to be a an inchoate art thing. It then becomes a blueprint very significant character. But in fact, it’s another for the crew. So you want everybody to know where actress. we were. So we had three levels. We had memory; we had infected memory; and then we had And the idea is—where the Oedipal stuff actually imagination. And memory was something where starts, it’s hard to say. Usually with birth, I think. Spider, as a boy, was present, and was not (Laughter) And though I’m certainly not a rigorous hallucinating. So scenes with him with his mother, Freudian… And in fact, we do kind of cross the line when she’s putting on lipstick, or, talking to him with the Oedipal thing, because technically, Spider about the spiderwebs and so on, that would be should be murdering his father so he can have his memory. Infected memory is when he is mother. But his mother happens to be Yvonne— remembering what he thought he saw as a boy, but and so that makes problems. So that’s why he he was hallucinating. And that would be all of the murders his mother, Yvonne, because she scenes where he sees Yvonne replacing his supplanted his mother, Mrs. Cleg. Just to answer mother. And shockingly enough, if you see the that question that I didn’t actually get to (Laughter) movie again, when you see Yvonne, think of her as before. And that was something that I did change, Mrs. Cleg, and you’ll get a completely different actually, because I think Patrick, even as he wanted story. You’ll get a story of a marriage where there’s to be rather clinical in his approach to some difficulties, the normal kind—he drinks a little schizophrenia, also wanted to be kind of rigorous in too much, maybe he’s not happy with sex with her. his approach to Freud. And he, I think, did initially She decides, for whatever reason, to dress a little have Spider thinking he was killing his father, and for him, and maybe go out to the pub and have a then accidentally killing his mother. And I thought few drinks with him, and not be so prudish about that was too coincidental and too perfectly Freudian his drinking; and then she gets drunk with him, then and Oedipal, and also didn’t make sort of logical they come home arm in arm and they have sex sense. The boy is threatened by this creature, together. That’s Bill and Mrs. Cleg, the happy Yvonne, and has already imagined that she was a version. But by this time, Spider doesn’t want to see co-murderer, a co-conspirator. So he has every that version. That’s the Oedipal problem. We’ll get

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right to murder her, as far as he’s concerned. So a pub, or in somebody’s house. And the actors will that was another change. get their friends to sort of read. This is not for money. And often, it’s not even for an audience; it’s SCHWARTZ: (Repeats audience question) Okay, just to see how it sounds. And they got Miranda to well, the idea of a character who’s able to step do that reading. So I said, “Well, was she any outside of his memories creates a complicated good?” (Laughter) They said, “She was fantastic.” relationship— it adds some element of objectivity, So I said, “Well, why don’t we get her?” so it’s not completely subjective film. Which is similar to the way that we’re unraveling the film as And so we did. And almost lost her, because this an audience. movie almost fell apart many times, including in preparation, just from the normal torture of CRONENBERG: I see your point. And as I say, you independent-film financing. And we almost lost her cannot photograph an abstract concept, so you to another movie, because she had committed to have to photograph people and things. And when I some other movie. And then she decided she said it’s impossible to do an actual sort of would blow that movie off and do ours. She knew it translation of a novel, that’s part of the problem. was going to be better. Because even a very bad novelist can give you that interior life by doing an inner monologue. It just Miranda’s great. She’s so good. I said, “Why didn’t works in literature very well. And I think a huge part I just hire three separate actresses, for all you’ve of that is the fact that consciousness depends very done? You’re so good that a lot of people didn’t much on language. At least higher consciousness, realize it was the same actress until almost the end as we experience it. Language is so much a part of of the movie, or, in fact, even into the credits at that. And if you’re doing something that is outside times.” And that goes beyond the game I wanted to of language, like photography, it’s very difficult to play. If you go maybe three-quarters of the way find a way to suggest subjectivity, really. So it’s kind through the movie and not realize it’s Miranda of a toss-up. But since you seem to think it worked playing Yvonne, and then you do, that’s sort of well, (Laughter) I’m going to say yeah, you’re right. perfect. But if you don’t realize it, then it kind of (Laughter) defeats the purpose of having her be the same person. (Laughter) SCHWARTZ: (Repeats audience question) Well, I guess we haven’t talked much about Miranda And she was asked in panels… And as I say, this is Richardson. But if you can talk about how she got stuff that—because I didn’t find it necessary to attached to the project, and just what it was like have this discussion with her, but, because I working with her. assume that actors know how to act, if they’re professionals, and it’s not my job to teach them CRONENBERG: It’s one of those lovely little stories. I how. You often read about directors, torturing their had tried to get Miranda in a movie before, and it actors to get performances and doing this and hadn’t worked out. And then I met her in Toronto tricks, and, firing guns and stuff. But you know, briefly, but hadn’t really spoken to her much. And unless you’re dealing with non-actors, who do need so when I flew to London to first talk to Ralph and some help, my assumption is they know how to do Catherine Bailey, a producer of the film, we it. They know how to torture themselves really well. naturally started to talk about who would play these (Laughter) You don’t have to do it for them. And roles. And I said, “What about Miranda Miranda said, “Well, I couldn’t play these people as Richardson?” And they said, “Well, that’s amazing different aspects of the same person.” An actor that you say that.” I said, “Well, why is that?” And cannot act an abstract concept. So she would play they said, “Well, in the four years in the wilderness, them as separate, real people. That’s the way she before we had a director, we did a reading of the did it. And she said that the hour-and-a-half or so in script.” And this is something that’s often done the makeup chair, and then change of costume, when people are frustrated; they have a script they and then, the pointy brassiere thing for Yvonne think is good, and they can’t get the movie made. were all she needed, really, to segue from one They’ll have a little reading on a stage like this, or in character into another. Just that little bit of time and

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those changes, because actors do feel all that stuff. A lot of actors say, “If you just give me another pair CRONENBERG: Thanks very much. of shoes, I’ll be a different character.” So that’s how she did it.

SCHWARTZ: Well, thank you, and please come back when you do Spider II , or whatever your next film is. (Applause)

The Pinewood Dialogues, an ongoing series of discussions with key creative figures in film, television, and digital media, are made possible with a generous grant from the Pannonia Foundation.

Museum of the Moving Image is grateful for the generous support of numerous corporations, foundations, and individuals. The Museum receives vital funding from the City of New York through the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs and the New York City Economic Development Corporation. Additional government support is provided by the New York State Council on the Arts, the Institute of Museum and Library Services, and the Natural Heritage Trust (administered by the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation). The Museum occupies a building owned by the City of New York, and wishes to acknowledge the leadership and assistance of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, Queens Borough President Helen M. Marshall, and City Council Member Eric N. Gioia.

Copyright © 2006, Museum of the Moving Image.

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